


the ticker tape life

by Ruriruri



Category: KISS (US Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 07:52:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17158157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruriruri/pseuds/Ruriruri
Summary: The fancy restaurants, the fancy clothes, the immediate, bewildering deference everywhere they went—it was like being submersed on some alien planet, or dropped off on Captain Nemo’s submarine. He couldn’t get accustomed to it. It wasn’t him. During the Unmasked tour, Eric does some sightseeing with Gene.





	the ticker tape life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [1JettaPug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/1JettaPug/gifts).



> To 1JettaPug. Merry Christmas!! Here at long last is some Gene/Eric fluff for you (maybe a bit more preslash, but)—I hope you enjoy it! Best to you and yours, and thank you for being just great fun to hang out with and write with. You’re a sweetheart!

It still didn’t feel real.

The fancy restaurants, the fancy clothes, the immediate, bewildering deference everywhere they went—it was like being submersed on some alien planet, or dropped off on Captain Nemo’s submarine. He couldn’t get accustomed to it. It wasn’t him.

“It’s cool,” Ace had said, laughing. “’S cool, really. I get it. Paulie and I used to be cab drivers before KISS made it. Gene taught fucking junior high. None of us were born into this classy shit. Don’t ever forget that.”

It was really hard to remember that when Paul was going through the wine lists at dinner with an adroitness no guy from Queens ever should’ve had.

Gene was different. He seemed—Eric didn’t know how to put it. Ace’s confidence was borne primarily out of booze, and Paul didn’t seem half as coolly put together as he’d thought even a month ago, but Gene seemed just exactly as he had during that audition. Like there was something about him Eric couldn’t quite catch. Not mysterious exactly, just out of reach. Maybe because he was from another country. Maybe because by his own admission, he spent most of his time off-tour sleeping around and watching old horror movies.

Eric couldn’t help but blurt around him. Ace just found his enthusiasm funny, while Paul found it mildly exasperating, but Gene seemed like he always took it in some strange kind of stride. Not quite like he was some endearing little kid, either, almost like he was… charmed or something, Eric didn’t know. However Gene felt, it made Eric a little more open and a little less self-conscious when he hung around Gene’s hotel suite. For once it wasn’t yet filled with a bevy of girls. 

“We’re in Paris. Paris, man! I—I know it’s not new to you, but it is to me! I gotta get my family something nice. My sister, she’ll want a beret, probably—hey, do they really wear them over here? I haven’t seen anyone yet—”

Gene laughed and took a Coke out of the hotel minifridge.

“Slow down, you’re going a mile a minute.” He paused. “You can get the berets anywhere. They shouldn’t be more than maybe fifteen francs.”

“Aw, shit, I didn’t change my money over from the Belgian stuff—”

“Forget it, we’ve got you covered.”

Eric grinned widely.

“Paul said something about the, uh, Champs… Champs…”

“If you buy anything at the Champs-Elysees we do _not_ have you covered.”

“Okay, okay. Do you think we’ll have time to sightsee?”

“Yeah, if we do it separately.”

“Separately?”

“We can’t all four go anywhere in public together without the makeup.” Gene said it so dryly that Eric faltered despite himself. “We tried it in Japan and had to confiscate a couple dozen cameras during the tour.”

“But that’s Japan, I mean, you were obviously foreigners, here it’s—”

“We have to pay people for their cameras, Eric.”

“Oh.” Eric deflated.

Too bad. Understandable, but too bad. He didn’t think Gene was getting at what he meant. He knew full well what a pain being in a band could be—he’d been in a bunch, none of which went anywhere, and he knew the bandmate camaraderie the magazines liked to emphasize just didn’t always stick around. But he wanted to get to know the three of them better. It was hard, when they all had separate hotel rooms and separate fixations. Ace would coke it up, or, once, bewilderingly, sniff glue out of a paper bag; Gene and Paul both slept with an awful lot of groupies… Eric was barely dipping his toe into it in comparison. He didn’t see the appeal of trying to fuck the hottest girl at the concert, especially not when the others were usually beating him to it. Besides, the girls weren’t the ones he’d be sticking with day-in, day-out. His bandmates were.

And they seemed more like separate cogs trying to work the same machine. Eric figured a lot of it was stress; he wasn’t privy yet to a lot of the talk about finances, but he knew Unmasked hadn’t done as well as they’d all hoped. Not in America. Europe and Australia, yeah, but the home market, ultimately, counted for a lot more. Eric wasn’t too worried—the stadiums always looked full from where he sat behind the drums—but he could sense the tension well enough, feel the weird heaviness emanating from everyone from the roadies to the pyro guys to the rest of the band. Only he felt really fresh and excited, and he didn’t know how to spur on any of the others. All he could really do about it was play his guts out during the shows and hope his enthusiasm rubbed off.

“Our last European tour was a couple years ago, we didn’t see much.” Gene looked over him as if he was considering something. “We’re here the next couple days. Want to go to the Louvre with me?”

“But you just said—”

“All four of us is a no, but two’s fine. Besides, going to art museums with Paul and Ace is pretty damn miserable.”

“How?”

“Paul stares at every single painting for at least ten minutes and Ace’ll just try to replicate the poses. You better thank God they don’t have Guernica on display.”

Eric muffled a snort.

***

The Louvre was a lot bigger than he’d thought it was. Big, and absolutely stuffed to the gills. There didn’t seem to be a square foot of wallspace that didn’t have a painting nailed to it, not even where they first walked in for tickets. They had thick guide pamphlets in about ten different languages up at the front, and Gene sniffed in aggravation when he found out they didn’t have a Hebrew one at the ready. Eric grabbed an English and a French one, skimming over both, trying to see if the little guide to French phrases he’d devoured on the flight over might have done him any good.

“‘La Victoire de Samothrace est vee…vay-vêtue de… d'un chitôn…’ aw, geez,” Eric cleared his throat, feeling Gene peering down at him, obviously struggling not to laugh at his pronunciations, and swapped pamphlets. “Okay, okay, ‘The Winged Victory of Samothrace is dressed in a chiton…’ what the hell is a chiton?”

“It’s that draped fabric the Greeks wore.”

“Oh.”

“If they were really smart, they’d put a food court in here.” 

Eric nearly choked.

“A food court? All those works of art and you’d want a food court?”

“Well, yeah. You get hungry looking at all this stuff. It makes sense.” 

“Gene, that doesn’t make any sense at all. You’d… you’d ruin the whole scene that way! Do you really wanna be eating McDonald’s while looking at the Mona Lisa?”

“There’s still that glass it’s behind, it wouldn’t hurt her—”

“That’s not the point!”

“No wonder Paul kinda took you under his wing there,” Gene said, shaking his head. “Anyway, it’s just practical. Look at all the kids here. Just look.”

Obediently, Eric looked. There were a fair amount of what looked like regular tourists, complete with sneakers, cameras, and gaudy t-shirts, but there were also a lot of high school and college-aged students milling around. An awful lot, for the early afternoon on a weekday. He was about to ask Gene why—maybe they just did a bunch of school tours, like the MoMA—but Gene answered before he could manage.

“If you’re a student, you get in free. Free! They’re losing out on thousands of francs a day because they’re not charging half their visitors! If they had any brains, they’d figure out how to recoup that loss.”

“By putting fast food restaurants in the Louvre…” Eric trailed, mild horror still embedded on his face. Gene just laughed and gave him a light thwap on the side of his head. 

“Come on. Winged Victory doesn’t wait around for photo ops.”

*** 

Winged Victory, as it turned out, was much more impressive than the tiny Mona Lisa. Better yet, they didn’t have to stand in line just to get a glimpse of it. It was off to itself, not flanked by paintings, and dauntingly massive. It looked as if it’d been upended from a temple only yesterday. Eric didn’t know much about art at all, but somehow the sculpture seemed more captivating in its broken state than it would have been whole. Headless, armless, yet still standing proud. Like some sort of testament to endurance or the human spirit or… well, he felt like a bit of a fool, trying to think in stuffy, oblique terms like that. Who did he really think he was kidding? He snapped a picture, then mumbled a few excuse mes and then some excusez-mois as he tried to get a better angle for his next shot, having to move his camera awkwardly between people’s shoulders to do it. Gene, a couple feet away, hadn’t taken a single photo yet.

“You haven’t been here before, have you?”

“Nah, I haven’t.”

“Why aren’t you taking pictures?”

“Eh, the postcards’ll be better.”

“Gene, come on, it’s the Louvre! You’ve gotta have some proof you were there yourself!”

Eric faltered as soon as he’d said it, head drooping, realizing, dumbly, that his perspective was all wrong and naïve for at least the tenth time just this week. Gene had been all over Europe before, and he’d be all over it again. Not just for the next tour, but on vacation and whenever he felt like it. He wasn’t enthralled with stupid things like buying a beret for his sister or standing under the Arc De Triomphe or seeing Jim Morrison’s grave. This wasn’t a once-in-a-lifetime trip for him, not at all. It was probably only a shade or two over ordinary. Depressing. If that was the way being a rockstar was, used to everything, just everything… well, maybe he wasn’t so comfortable with it. Maybe it would be bad, no, awful, to _get_ comfortable with it. After reaching such a high point, what was left? Nothing. Just nothing.

Gene looked over at him, expression strange. Not unreadable, for once, not cynical or tired, just caught off guard. Then it shifted again, to something thoughtful and almost warm. There was the start of a smile pursing its way onto his face.

“You’re right. You know, you’re right.” He reached over, patted his shoulder, and Eric flushed. “You’re too short for this. Here, lemme take some shots for you. I’ll make sure you get some good ones.”


End file.
